With the recent elections over, many municipalities will be reviewing and possibly renewing their strategic plans. To assist with this,  I did a presentation on Strategic Planning for municipalities at the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association conference in Edmonton yesterday.    The slides from this presentation will be available on the AUMA website for all members.  See the description below. 

“A Hands-on Session for Creating a Strategic Roadmap”

“Strategic Planning provides organizations with a roadmap to success. Often, there is a great deal of confusion over how to produce a workable Strategic Plan. This session works through an outline of the key concepts included in a Strategic Plan and how best to address them. This session will appeal to anyone involved in Strategic Planning, providing participants with a variety of tools and processes that can be put to use right away.”

Maria

I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s book called “Meatball Sundae”.  He talks about how companies that used to thrive on mass production and mass advertising and may not thrive in the world of “new marketing” where there is a need to talk directly to the consumer and also respond to a demand for more customization to a consumer’s needs. He talks about changing from finding customers for your products to finding products for your customers.     He gives a great example of an online t-shirt company called “Threadless”, that invites consumers to submit their own designs for their t-shirts as well as to enter contests where their design may be promoted to others.     He also discusses how many companies will try to use social media or other new marketing techniques but not change the basic design of how they serve their customers, and this will cause failure.  

So what does this mean to you or your company?    One thing that is becoming clear to me is the need for some differentiation of how social media works for different audiences.  Many of the social media articles or talks that I have attended seem to focus on reaching the consumer through social media venues that those consumers may be participating in. (B2C marketing)   On the other hand, in selling to organizations, many decision makers do not have a Facebook page  (unless they have older kids and want to keep up to date on what they are doing).  They also do not have a blog, or Twitter account.   A  small number are on LinkedIn but seldom go there.   They still may consider these things a waste of time.   So how do we reach them with “new” marketing?      

Here’s my current thinking on this.   Almost everyone “Google’s” for things that they are looking for, whether for business or personal.    Working with keywords and other Google optimization can be helpful.    Google will find keywords in your webite and blogs and apparently loves You Tube videos, so it means that although this audience may not always find us through the social media directly, using  it can help them find you through Google.   Then, over time, if these customers start using social media, you will already be there.

In the end, I still believe that the relationships that you can develop are how you will grow your business.    There are many more opportunities to do that online with social media.   However, people also crave personal contact and so I see a growth in “blended” social media arrangements where people can connect both online and in person.  

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Maria

Allan R Cohen feels that the heroic leadership style such as exhibited by  Jack Welch or Steve Jobs is outdated and too often creates superstar “cults” around these strong (“heroic”) personalities.     He feels that leaders today need to be able to both lead and manage and that there should not be some people called “leaders” and others called “managers”.   If you can only manage, you are unable to work with vision, and if you are all about vision, then you may not be good at making things happen.  According to Cohen, people at all levels of an organization should be able to lead and also manage, when needed.    This goes against other philosophies that advocate that those strong personalities are the very thing that can inspire people and rally them around a cause.      

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/managing/strategy/article.jsp?content=20101108_10023_10023

I do think there is some value in the heroic model since I have personally seen the value of an inspiring personality in getting everyone onboard with a new vision or direction.  They are often able to create an emotional appeal that can create strong motivation in a team of “followers”.    However, I would argue that several things have to be in place in order for this to work longer-term.

1) The team members need to feel that they can make a difference and are allowed to make some leadership decisions of their own.    The emotional motivation created by the leader often can spur significant creativity in the team-members, if they are given the latitude to use creative solutions and ideas.  

2) Team members need to be able to pick up the management functions that are required.  This is where Jim Collin’s “Get the right people on the bus” has significant value.    The leader also needs rolls up his/her sleeves and sometimes gets involved in management and operations duties alongside the team.   At Westjet, employees have been impressed by the fact that the CEO will sometimes be seen cleaning up the airplane. 

3) The team members need to feel there is a reward of some kind for them stepping up to a leader’s vision.    If we think of  unproductive labour negotiations, they often occur because labour does not think that there is anything in the new ideas that makes sense for them.   

Maria